Persuasion
curtsey passed; she heard his voice; he talked to Mary, said all that
was right, said something to the Miss Musgroves, enough to mark an easy
footing; the room seemed full, full of persons and voices, but a few
minutes ended it. Charles shewed himself at the window, all was ready,
their visitor had bowed and was gone, the Miss Musgroves were gone too,
suddenly resolving to walk to the end of the village with the
sportsmen: the room was cleared, and Anne might finish her breakfast as
she could.
“It is over! it is over!” she repeated to herself again and again, in
nervous gratitude. “The worst is over!”
Mary talked, but she could not attend. She had seen him. They had met.
They had been once more in the same room.
Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feeling
less. Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been
given up. How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an
interval had banished into distance and indistinctness! What might not
eight years do? Events of every description, changes, alienations,
removals—all, all must be comprised in it, and oblivion of the past—
how natural, how certain too! It included nearly a third part of her
own life.
Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings
eight years may be little more than nothing.
Now, how were his sentiments to be read? Was this like wishing to avoid
her? And the next moment she was hating herself for the folly which
asked the question.
On one other question which perhaps her utmost wisdom might not have
prevented, she was soon spared all suspense; for, after the Miss
Musgroves had returned and finished their visit at the Cottage she had
this spontaneous information from Mary:—
“Captain Wentworth is not very gallant by you, Anne, though he was so
attentive to me. Henrietta asked him what he thought of you, when they
went away, and he said, ‘You were so altered he should not have known
you again.’”
Mary had no feelings to make her respect her sister’s in a common way,
but she was perfectly unsuspicious of being inflicting any peculiar
wound.
“Altered beyond his knowledge.” Anne fully submitted, in silent, deep
mortification. Doubtless it was so, and she could take no revenge, for
he was not altered, or not for the worse. She had already acknowledged
it to herself, and she could not think differently, let him think of
her as he would. No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom
had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect
lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick
Wentworth.
“So altered that he should not have known her again!” These were words
which could not but dwell with her. Yet she soon began to rejoice that
she had heard them. They were of sobering tendency; they allayed
agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier.
Frederick Wentworth had used such words, or something like them, but
without an idea that they would be carried round to her. He had thought
her wretchedly altered, and in the first moment of appeal, had spoken
as he felt. He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill,
deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of
character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could
not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. It had been the
effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity.
He had been most warmly attached to her, and had never seen a woman
since whom he thought her equal; but, except from some natural
sensation of curiosity, he had no desire of meeting her again. Her
power with him was gone for ever.
It was now his object to marry. He was rich, and being turned on shore,
fully intended to settle as soon as he could be properly tempted;
actually looking round, ready to fall in love with all the speed which
a clear head and a quick taste could allow. He had a heart for either
of the Miss Musgroves, if they could catch it; a heart, in short, for
any pleasing young woman who came in his way, excepting Anne Elliot.
This was his only secret exception, when he said to his sister, in
answer to her suppositions:—
“Yes, here I am, Sophia, quite ready to make a foolish match. Anybody
between fifteen and thirty may have me for asking. A little beauty, and
a few smiles, and a few compliments to the navy, and I am a lost man.
Should not this be enough for a sailor, who has had no society among
women to make him nice?”
He said it, she knew, to be contradicted. His bright proud eye spoke
the conviction that he was nice; and Anne Elliot was not out of his
thoughts, when he more seriously described the woman he should wish to
meet with. “A strong mind, with sweetness of manner,” made the first
and the last of the description.
“That is the woman I want,” said he. “Something a little inferior I
shall of course put up with, but it must not be much. If I am a fool, I
shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than
most men.”
CHAPTER VIII.
From this time Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot were repeatedly in the
same circle. They were soon dining in company together at Mr
Musgrove’s, for the little boy’s state could no longer supply his aunt
with a pretence for absenting herself; and this was but the beginning
of other dinings and other meetings.
Whether former feelings were to be renewed must be brought to the
proof; former times must undoubtedly be brought to the recollection of
each; _they_ could not but be reverted to; the year of their engagement
could not but be named by him, in the little narratives or descriptions
which conversation called forth. His profession qualified him, his
disposition lead him, to talk; and “_That_ was in the year six;”
“_That_ happened before I went to sea in the year six,” occurred in the
course of the first evening they spent together: and though his voice
did not falter, and though she had no reason to suppose his eye
wandering towards her while he spoke, Anne felt the utter
impossibility, from her knowledge of his mind, that he could be
unvisited by remembrance any more than herself. There must be the same
immediate association of thought, though she was very far from
conceiving it to be of equal pain.
They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the
commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing!
There _had_ been a time, when of all the large party now filling the
drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to
cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral
and Mrs Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could
allow no other exceptions even among the married couples), there could
have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so
in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay,
worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a
perpetual estrangement.
When he talked, she heard the same voice, and discerned the same mind.
There was a very general ignorance of all naval matters throughout the
party; and he was very much questioned, and especially by the two Miss
Musgroves, who seemed hardly to have any eyes but for him, as to the
manner of living on board, daily regulations, food, hours, &c., and
their surprise at his accounts, at learning the degree of accommodation
and arrangement which was practicable, drew from him some pleasant
ridicule, which reminded Anne of the early days when she too had been
ignorant, and she too had been accused of supposing sailors to be
living on board without anything to eat, or any cook to dress it if
there were, or any servant to wait, or any knife and fork to use.
From thus listening and thinking, she was roused by a whisper of Mrs
Musgrove’s who, overcome by fond regrets, could not help saying—
“Ah! Miss Anne, if it had pleased Heaven to spare my poor son, I dare
say he would have been just such another by this time.”
Anne suppressed a smile, and listened kindly, while Mrs Musgrove
relieved her heart a little more; and for a few minutes, therefore,
could not keep pace with the conversation of the others.
When she could let her attention take its natural course again, she
found the Miss Musgroves just fetching the Navy List (their own navy
list, the first that had ever been at Uppercross), and sitting down
together to pore over it, with the professed view of finding out the
ships that Captain Wentworth had commanded.
“Your first was the Asp, I remember; we will look for the Asp.”
“You will not find her there. Quite worn out and broken up. I was the
last man who commanded her. Hardly fit for service then. Reported fit
for home service for a year or two, and so I was sent off to the West
Indies.”
The girls looked all amazement.
“The Admiralty,” he continued, “entertain themselves now and then, with
sending a few hundred men to sea, in a ship not fit to be employed. But
they have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that may
just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to
distinguish the very set who may be least missed.”
“Phoo! phoo!” cried the Admiral, “what stuff these young fellows talk!
Never was a better sloop than the Asp in her day. For an old built
sloop, you would not see her equal. Lucky fellow to get her! He knows
there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at
the same time. Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no more
interest than his.”
“I felt my luck, Admiral, I assure you;” replied Captain Wentworth,
seriously. “I was as well satisfied with my appointment as you can
desire. It was a great object with me at that time to be at sea; a very
great object, I wanted to be doing something.”
“To be sure you did. What should a young fellow like you do ashore for
half a year together? If a man had not a wife, he soon wants to be
afloat again.”
“But, Captain Wentworth,” cried Louisa, “how vexed you must have been
when you came to the Asp, to see what an old thing they had given you.”
“I knew pretty well what she was before that day;” said he, smiling. “I
had no more discoveries to make than you would have as to the fashion
and strength of any old pelisse, which you had seen lent about among
half your acquaintance ever since you could remember, and which at
last, on some very wet day, is lent to yourself. Ah! she was a dear old
Asp to me. She did all that I wanted. I knew she would. I knew that we
should either go to the bottom together, or that she would be the
making of me; and I never had two days of foul weather all the time I
was at sea in her; and after taking privateers enough to be very
entertaining, I had the good luck in my passage home the next autumn,
to fall in with the very French frigate I wanted. I brought her into
Plymouth; and here another instance of luck. We had not been six hours
in the Sound, when a gale came on, which lasted four days and nights,
and which would have done for poor old Asp in half the time; our touch
with the Great Nation not having much improved our condition.
Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have been a gallant
Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the
newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought
about me.” Anne’s shudderings were to herself alone; but the Miss
Musgroves could be as open as they were sincere, in their exclamations
of pity and horror.
“And so then, I suppose,” said Mrs Musgrove, in a low voice, as if
thinking aloud, “so then he went away to the Laconia, and there he met
with our poor boy. Charles, my dear,” (beckoning him to her), “do ask
Captain Wentworth where it was he first met with your poor brother. I
always forgot.”